Archives for 2010

I usually don’t even bother to read most of the "inspirational" emails many people seem to have an irresistible urge to email out to everyone in their address book, but the one I got last night regarding the New Year caught my eye. …So much so that I thought I’d share it as a prelude to this book review. I’m going to omit one paragraph that I think detracts from the message.

Life, I am the new year.
I am an unspoiled page in your book of time.
I am your next chance at the art of living.

I am your opportunity to practice
what you have learned about life
during the last twelve months.

All that you sought
and didn’t find is hidden in me,
waiting for you to search it out
with more determination.

All the good that you tried for
and didn’t achieve
is mine to grant
when you have fewer conflicting desires.

All that you dreamed but didn’t dare to do,
all that you hoped but did not will,
all the faith that you claimed but did not have –
these slumber lightly,
waiting to be awakened
by the touch of a strong purpose.

I am the new year.

Given that we all know what happens to people when they finally decide to give evolutionary principles a go in pursuit of leanness, health and well being, I find that inspirational verse quite appropriate for a book review just about such evolutionary principles on the last day of 2010.

At the same time, Art manages to make it a fun read, which I believe was his goal; achieved.

While I was provided an advance hardcopy of the book from his publisher, I decided also to purchase the Kindle version and I’m glad I did because the job they did in hyperlinking references, chapters, the TOC and index is really masterful. This allowed me to jump with ease to every single reference on the fly, read Art’s additional (more in-depth, more "sciency") comments and immediately return to where I was reading in the text. In addition, there’s a notes section at the end of the book with even more references, more commentary from Art and additional sources for investigation.

And so I think the book really becomes three books in one:

The beginner, "fun read," where one just goes through and get the main points.

The old hand (Paleo, Primal, EvFit) read where you do just like I did and get the additional science and commentary.

The Paleo-geek read, where you actually check the references and use the book going forward as largely a library of excellent references.

Where this book excels in my view is in its focus on principles, randomized. Call them the Paleo principles, evolutionary principles or whatever you want, but this is not in any way about reenactment; it’s about gene expression. If anything comes through load & clear and a lot does, it’s that you don’t have control. Your genes do. You can’t directly control how your genes express themselves. What you can do is envisage many aspects of the wild human-animal experience and extract principles for eating, moving, going hungry, physically exerting, sleeping, resting, playing — and doing absolutely nothing — to simulate as much of that in-the-wild existence as you can in some semblance of random fashion — or, never doing the same thing the same way all the time — and if you’re lucky, your genes will express themselves in the most optimal way to make of you a pristine human animal specimen for as long as possible.

As many of my regular readers know, Art was my entry into this wonderful world of thinking ancestrally and applying that thought to action (and inaction). This was back in May of 2007, when as a fat and unhealthy political blogger with hyper blood pressure, I hit the gym and worked it out for myself that there was an inverse relationship between intensity and endurance. So I dropped the cardio, shortened the length and frequency of the gym sessions, blogged about it and had a commenter tell me it reminded him of Art De Vany and his Power Law.

After finding Art’s blog and putting many of his ideas into practice, I eventually blogged less about current events and increasingly about my experiences and impressive results. I came to his attention, we exchanged emails from time to time and then one day, I had the great fortune to meet him and his new wife in Las Vegas for his Evolutionary Fitness seminar. Art is truly a striking presence: tall, lean, impeccable, super-model posture (in the best sense of that ideal) and always sporting a smile that’s infectious.

The book is in many ways a greatly expanded version of that seminar with lots of blanks filled in and lots of Art’s personal experiences going back decades. His study and knowledge of human metabolism is formidable but it almost doesn’t matter because the man is 72 years old; clearly lean, strong, and vital. So while the science is quite nice and he’s an academic — a PhD — and has to play it that way — just look at the man. That’s what I did the very first time I found his website and blogged about him. So while Art is to be well recognized for getting to the science and making it available, a picture in his case has always been worth a thousand scientific references for me.

Or, think of it this way: how much more difficult is it for a 72 year old health and fitness blogger & author to have credibility than, say, some 30-somthing? That he looks as he does and does as he does is really the best advertising of credibility his book could ever have.

So…every honest book review ought to be credible in the sense that surely there was something in the book I didn’t love and I ought to say what it was; otherwise, how would people take my overall assessment seriously? OK, so here goes: he doesn’t always eat every egg yolk. While I never saw him ever mention it on his blog, he advocates canola oil in the book. Right; I don’t do either of those.

But here’s my answer to those who’ve focussed on this in other reviews: this is Art’s path. One reason I probably stuck with this deal way back when — long enough to see the results that would propel me forward — was Art’s regular insistence that everyone must find their own way. Note: not can; not should; must.

This is an excellent introduction for beginners: those who yet know nothing; and it’s accessible. It even has a full 30-day meal plan which I found impressive…because if only one were to follow that plan 80-90%, they would see amazing benefits and we all know it.

It’s also the sort of paleo / primal / evfit book I want to see written. This isn’t A diet. It’s potentially 7 billion individual diets and counting, based on the specific path each individual takes for themselves based on a few simple principles learned from observations from Kitavan to Inuit and everything in between. What works best in an environment of self-experimentation is paying attention, above all, to how you look & feel — as any animal naturally would do. This is the story of one of those 7 billion potential paths, 30 years in the making, and pioneering to boot.

Not to your liking? Well, tell us of your path.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This review would not be complete without the story of how that name and presence dovetailed with my whole experience and how it relates to Art De Vany. One of the things that led to my getting fat and having hyper blood pressure was about two years spent trading options for my own account full time. I traded credit spreads on the SPX and initially did quite well. 20-30% gains per month were commonplace. In less than a year I took $60,000 to several hundreds of thousands.

And then I lost over $200,000 in about a week.

In the end, it turned out it wasn’t about the money as much as it was the shock of realizing how fooled I’d been for so long. No, I hadn’t made an error in trading. Trading was the error (for me), in itself. I traded according to the same rules I always had. And then I recalled a radio interview I’d heard several years earlier by an options trader (may have been Taleb, but I don’t recall). He said that many options strategies are such that you win for a long time and then give up everything and more in a very short time.

I began looking for information. And what I found was Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets. This book changed my life for the better. I came to realize that what had really happened is that I had begun my options trading at an opportune time for the particular strategy I used — by chance — and that I really wasn’t a super trader after all. So the choice was: back to market timing, or quit. So I quit. I also quit subjecting myself to the quotidian flow of talking-head hyperbole designed to fool me and worst of all, to have me thinking on one side or the other of a two-sided coin instead of independently. Since that time, I have almost never listened to CNBC, CNN, FNC, MSNBC or any other alphabet soup news outlet. As I believe Taleb said in FBR, important news will find its way to you.

And so on that bright spring day in May, 2007 when I discovered Art De Vany and his work, I had no idea that he and Taleb were friends, that Art was a fan of his work, that it so bolstered the principles of Evolutionary Fitness and The New Evolution Diet.

Taleb has a sizable last chapter of the book and it’s classic Taleb if you’ve read FBR or even The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Summary: you fool yourself all the time and it’s the rare events in your life that have the biggest, lasting impact.

And so let’s come full circle because it’s important. What Taleb has identified as a general aspect of epistemology (generally: the quality of your knowledge), Art has distilled physiologically. And so in the end, the book achieves the best triumph of all: a mind/body integration. They both learned from one another: you must be skeptical of what you think you know and you have no control over your genes. You must integrate the role of chance in both. You must not fool your mind and you must respect the expression of your genes.

You still have no guarantee for a fit mind and healthy body, but this is an excellent start for a New Year, if you’ll just…give it a chance.

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A pic Beatrice took. Rotor is by the fire and Nuke, in the cat bird seat where she likes it. She’s the guardian, though she’s become accustomed to sleeping with me under the covers nearly every night, but only after 3-4PM when she wakes me up with her whine, asking permission. I never turn her down.

It’s Christmas at the Cabin

01/04/11: Well it happened again. While Boing Boing didn’t link up this post, Sean Bonner linked up the original one. Bless his heart. And do read his post because he describes his own success with the experiment over the last year, calling it "easily one of the best moves I’ve ever made in my entire flippin’ life." And so I’ve added an update at the original post from a year ago to alert boingboing readers to this post as well as to promise them a primer on the other aspects of the Paleo lifeway by this Friday, 1/7.

And suddenly, on the very last day of the year this blog went from a respectable 40,000 average visits per month to over 80,000 in December, and it carried over to January where there were about 125,000 visits and a quarter of a million page views. But the best part of it is that somehow, I managed to not squander the opportunity. Some way, some how, average visits and page views more than doubled month to month to over 80,000 and 150,000. And now, the average over the last three months has climbed to over 100,000 and nearly 200,000 monthly (which is why I just love getting whiny complaints about my No Bullshit, vitriolic style from anonymous commenters).

A month later I did an update post and even provided photographic evidence that my hair looked pretty normal. That one generated another 158 comments.

But even better than all that are the many comments whenever Real Results are reported, or emails I’ve received that mention that they first learned of the blog because of the no soap, no shampoo post, had stuck around and had results of their own to show for it in terms of improved body composition and health.

Earlier today I posted a primer of sorts on self-experimentation which could be considered a bit of a prerequisite to this post, because after 18 months now of spectacular success with this experiment, my focus on it has changed quite a bit. That is to say, I don’t need to go into what the results are — what I’ve already written — as the results are unchanged or, even better.

And it’s not just us Paleoish who’re interested in all this, at least the shampoo part (which to me, is the lesser in importance). There’s definitely interest in the mainstream. Perhaps that’s why my post ended up bridging the gap to some extent.

Comments are of course open for any old or new hands to relay their experiences but what I’m most interested in for this post is why, when in the context of Paleoish we speak of clean, organic, whole and real foods and of various supplements for the health of this bodily organ or that, so many go right ahead and daily slather all manner of industrial, synthetic, chemical products (to include cosmetics) on their very largest organ of all: their skin?

Riddle me that.

I must confess that I watched the various comment threads from those other posts with some degree of amusement at the extra trouble so many would go through to come up with a substitute for the admittedly very convenient store-bought stuff in a bottle. Vinegar. Baking soda. Coconut oil. …Or some combination and on and on. Or multiple layers and steps. Hell, I’d not be surprised if the self-experiment didn’t work on grounds of pure selection bias: as in pain-in-the-ass.

Or, let me put it this way. What I’ve found over these 18 months is that I never even thought of the money I was saving. Hell, a decent sized bottle of shampoo and body wash would last me months anyway. Oh, and then there’s the travel size versions. No, what has made this experience oh so satisfying is that I don’t have to worry about any of that anymore — ever. Don’t have to buy it. Don’t have to carry it. Don’t ever run out of it. Don’t have to get it tossed in the dumpster by TSA goons.

So what it boils down to is that this has been such a tremendous experience on the pure grounds of liberation. Now, I can wash up anywhere, anytime there’s a shower, lake, river or stream at hand and feel completely normal about it, not as though it’s the best I can do because I don’t have a big bag of "personal hygiene" products immediately at hand.

The other time I was amused in all of this was at the MovNat experience this summer. Here we were doing a pretty good job of simulating a number of aspects of, when not a complete existence in the wild, at least a minimal one. This included, among other things, going barefoot most of the time, shirtless, real food only, with only water to drink (no coffee, tea, alcohol), minimal lighting at night…

Me? When I went to shower I took a towel. That’s it and I even had to borrow it from Erwan because I’d simply forgotten to pack one. And yet here were all these other folks marching off to the showers with their large bags in tote and in a couple of cases — surprising enough for guys in itself — there was a cornucopia of hygiene products from shaving materials to shampoos, body washes, scrubs, conditioners, lotions…and on and on.

Far from being close to a wild human experience, it wasn’t even close to minimalist.

As a final aspect I’d thought of — but not seen addressed yet that I could recall — I looked at the comments on the boingboing post yesterday and found this one, posted months later.

For the most part of what i’ve read of these comments, it seems that no-one has yet addressed that a persons state of health and diet is the major contributer to body odours. You can be a person that bathes, shampoos and deodorises regularly but still stink offensively to high heaven from poor food choices, lack of fruit and veg, too much processed junk and the degenerative diseases developed. On the other hand, you can be a person who is physically active on a daily basis, eats only fresh food, lightly cooked meats and seafoods, avoids grain foods (because we are NOT birds) and smell perfectly fine from not using cosmetics and soaps, etc. To determine/decide if another potential mates’ odour was offensive or not is one of many important evolutionary ‘tools’ to ensure that humans mated with other humans who were in good health with good genes. Cosmetics were originally developed to mask a persons poor health, rather than making the effort to improve their health (more like ignorance in the face of decadence). We almighty Human Beings forget that we are just another animal on this planet, and how many of them (animals) do you see using processed foods, soaps and clothing? Compare the health of a chimpanzee (our closest biological relative) to most humans, these chimps are much better off than we are without our modern vices. We apply chemicals to our skin, eat food from sources that are not digestable in their natural state, technology that does all our moving/movement for us, yet still have it in our heads that we are ‘smarter’ than other living organisms on this planet. Our sense of ‘smart’ seems like a hell of a lot of ‘stupid’ to me. If our animal friends shared the same voice and could point and laugh, we would never hear the end of it, except we are HARMING THEM in all these processes.

Interesting, logical line of thought. As animals who were clearly fecund enough throughout eons to survive, do you imagine that noses were being held all the while? And if so, why; and if not, why not?

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All of these books are heavily researched and referenced, but the more common thread I find among them is a deep confidence in these authors surrounding a pretty simple set of dietary and/or lifestyle principles informed by a recognition that humans are animals with a reasonably easy-to-determine biology and physiology, and that a lean & strong body and a healthy sense of well being ought to come naturally for human beings, as it does for all other animals that behave in accordance with their natures.

But even more than that, one gets the sense — at least I do — that these foregoing principles were arrived at first by simply thinking logically about it, followed by self-experimentation, followed by excellent results, followed by introducing family, friends and clients to these various self-experiments, followed by equally impressive results in them. What kinds of results? Well, there are tons of them right here, in both the posts and the many comments to the posts.

The scientific references contained in these books are fine and dandy and to some extent, necessary for credibility — but how are you going to know any of this science has any particular value to you, unless you put it to the test on yourself? And what happens when your personal results in terms of how you look & feel contradict what mainstream, conventional experts have been telling you and backing it with "science;" you know, of the sort typically reported in breathless quotidian headlines in the "Health" section.

To put it more directly, probably the most common comment we see around here in terms of self-reporting of results and progress is the prelude; that of years, often decades of trying to follow "expert," conventional advice, yet getting fatter, sicker, and more depressed all the time. Look around you. How genuinely happy and self assured can these increasing numbers of obese souls be, especially the young ones who ought to be having the times of their lives? And, do you suppose they’ve really been self-experimenting at all, or have they simply been doing what they’ve been told to do — or not, feeling or realizing that "eat less, exercise more" is like some sort of miserable prison sentence?

So I would suggest to you that your experience trumps all science in these matters, no matter how sound it seems. That said, there’s no need to go off the deep end. Moreover, it’s better that you gain the confidence you need to carry it forward and you do that by controlling for variables. What that means in simple terms is that you change one or two things at a time, just long enough to see how it works for you. Then you change more things.

In a dietary context, perhaps you go low-carb first, but don’t worry so much about what sorts of foods you’re eating. And once you’ve established how that works, you might try dropping grains, sugars and anything with modern vegetable or seed oils, like corn, canola, soy, safflower, sunflower, etc. A different approach might be to just drop the aforementioned processed foods and go the Paleo way from the get-go. You might find that it’s not so much the carbs, but what kind of carbs.

Once you’ve established your path in terms of diet, now you can turn towards exercise. Perhaps you simply drop cardio. Maybe replace it with sprints. And how about shortening your workout from three sessions of an hour each to 2 sessions per week of 15-30 minutes, but give it your all and lift heavy for fewer reps and fewer sets?

There are a lot of variables to account for and while it’s certainly possible to jump in and change everything at once and you’ll probably get excellent results, those results are going to be an average. You’ll have no way of knowing what’s giving you the greatest benefit vs. what might not be helping, or is even slowing you down because the negative is being made up in other areas.

In my personal case it kinda worked out this way without even explicitly trying to go the slow, steady route. I began with the workouts. Short, 30-minute sessions twice per week, no cardio, and I began to see results even without much attention to diet, especially in a rapid lowering of blood pressure. Then, over the months I gradually began cleaning up the diet to a more Paleo way and saw results increase in terms of more rapid weight loss, easing of GURD symptoms, dropping sinus allergy meds, and so forth. What did this tell me? It told me I was on a good track in terms of both diet and exercise. Had I done everything at once it would have been harder to tell what exactly was doing what.

Then, after another few months I discovered intermittent fasting and fasted workouts and weight loss got even more rapid, energy levels seemed to increase, sleep became simply awesome and again, I had verified for myself that humans, just like any other animals, are designed to go hungry now and then. When we go hungry our bodies turn to self repair by using the waste, damage and garbage in our cells as repair fuel.

The next step was some supplementation. This one is difficult because it’s simply very difficult to gain certainty, and so I keep it simple and reasonable. First, I got plenty of sunshine and that was a very noticeable improvement in well being, to the extent of occasional euphoria. So, I began taking some vitamin D and noticed I never get colds anymore (I currently take 4,000 IU, but not every day). A bit of cod liver oil & fish oil seems like a good idea so I do it, but modestly, about 3g total per day. And vitamin K2 I think might be one of the more important ones since we don’t seem to eat as much of the foods containing it as we would have in the wild. And that’s pretty much it, save for a bit of magnesium, and some iodine once per week or so.

…But there was one more self experiment I engaged in that turned out to be perhaps the most surprising, and of all the things I’ve ever blogged about, seems to have been the single thing that got this blog more attention that anything else.

My next post will recount the history and results of that most successful self-experimentation, now more than 18 months running.

Lots of time on hand up here at 4,500 feet elevation in the Sierras. Things winding down from Christmas with family who depart tomorrow and then will rev up again on Friday when another set of family show up for the New Year festivities.

Cooking meals is, of course, a big part of the enjoyment. Typically, we eat breakfast around noon, maybe snack a bit in the afternoon and then have dinner around 7pm or so.

Christmas day began with chili "verde" & eggs. Corn tortilla optional, but I had one.

Chili Verde

I detailed how to make this way back here, March of 2008. I make it two ways. This way uses tomatoes instead of tomatillos in the classic way but I think it’s still called verde because you use green jalapeno peppers whereas, chili colorado uses red peppers. I prefer tomatoes when making it as a breakfast dish and tomatillos when it’s gonna be dinner.

One favorite way to eat it is in a bowl with a spoon and with the eggs on top so that the yolks run all over the cubes of pork. One thing I can’t emphasize enough is to get the cheap pork steaks with bones that are more red meat than white meat. You know it’s done when all the meat has fallen off the bones when you stir it.

My brother showed up with elk steaks from a recent wild kill in Montana by a friend of his (same animal that the elk salami came from in my last post).

Cooking Elk

The lighting is poor and I only have my iPhone 4 for picture taking up here, but this was actually more of a medium rare, not medium as it looks.

Elk Steak

We concluded that it was a bit chewy (perhaps rare would have been better), but very tasty. I’m definitely going to have to learn more about elk. My brother tells me there’s a French restaurant in San Jose that has elk tenderloin filets on its menu and it’s the best steak he’s ever had.

I think it’s wise to avoid the major neolithic agents of inflammation: gluten, sugar, and high omega-6 vegetable oils, but what you eat beyond that should be targeted towards your own constitution rather than what "Grok" ate.

Here’s the thing. As convenient as it would be to have a “one-size fits all” diet that works for everyone, we’re not robots. We’re more diverse than that. Someone who’s dealing with an autoimmune disease, leaky gut, arthritis and skin rashes would certainly benefit from a strict Paleo diet and may even need to follow that approach for the rest of their lives. But for someone that is fundamentally healthy, such a diet may be unnecessarily restrictive.

In the end, I think it’s best to keep it simple. It’s about tweaking as much as you can from your own genetic makeup by synthesizing an environment for yourself that might, just maybe, fool your genes into keeping you around far longer than they give a damn about doing so (reproduction). While it’s [educated] guesswork, we have reason to believe we’re on the right track simply because of the body composition and health improvements of so many we’ve witnessed.

Eat real food (meat, fowl, fish, natural fats from animals, coconuts & olives; veggies, fruits, & nuts) that you shop for and prepare yourself most of the time. Add a little dairy if you like it and can tolerate it. Find the range of balance that works best for you in terms of fat, protein & carbohydrate ratios. I say ‘range’ because I think you ought to mix things up; seasonally, or whatever method works for you. Especially: cut out grains, sugar and vegetable oils. Consider supplementing with omega-3 fats.

Allow yourself to go hungry every day, at least a little (first meal of the day is a good time — don’t eat until you’re truly hungry). Every once in a while, go hungry for a whole day.

Get plenty of sunlight; and, probably supplement vitamin D.

Run very fast sometimes, play hard when you can, and push and lift heavy things around when you have the urge. Do it briefly and intensely; not too often and not too long. Once to twice per week for 20-30 minutes each is plenty. But always push yourself for that brief time.

Get lots of sleep.

Now, the above is really nothing like Paleoman lived since his existence was, by definition, genuine. We’re just crudely modeling, so perhaps a little less romanticization is in order; and especially, dogma. Seriously, I read some comments on various blogs and forums, and it makes me think how utterly ridiculous it would be for the Inuit to try and tell the Kitavans how to eat & live, and vice versa — assuming they would even if they could, of course, which is doubtful.

The thing is, the news that Neanderthals (and presumably, Cro-Magnon) ate some grain should surprise no one and if they find themselves disappointed, then they perhaps ought to hold that out as a sign that they’re going about this for all the wrong reasons. How you look and feel is the right reason.

Grains are starvation food and likely have been for a long time. Now, when they can demonstrate that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons turned up their noses at a fresh kill in favor of a crude tortilla cooked on a dirty rock, then we can surely be disappointed. So I don’t think we have anything to worry about.

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I'm Richard Nikoley. Free the Animal began in 2003 and as of 2018, contains over 4,600 posts and 110,000 comments from readers. I cover a lot of ground, blogging what I wish...from health, diet, and lifestyle to philosophy, politics, social issues, and cryptocurrency. I celebrate the audacity and hubris to live by your own exclusive authority and take your own chances in life. [Read more...]

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